Dutch zoo animals must abjure meat on Ash Wednesday

Really? Catholic lions, tigers and bears? Oh my! Well, that’s the presumption based on the actions of a very foolish zoo in the Netherlands.

Alert Dutch reader Gert sent me an email with the following content:

According to De Volkskrant, a leading Dutch newspaper, next Wednesday the predators in the Zoo at Nuenen (in the Catholic southern part of The Netherlands) won’t get their meal because of the celebration of Ash-Wednesday. It is a Catholic practice to fast on this day.

According to the Google translation (JAC: I have touched this up a bit):

The predators of Animal Kingdom in Nuenen will get nothing to eat next Wednesday. For that day is Ash Wednesday, and, as the zoo reports, the lions, tigers and wolves will be fasting.

The seals will have better luck than the carnivores. They will be served herring, a Catholic tradition on the day after Carnival. But the lions and other carnivores will get nothing.

According to Animal Kingdom, it is definitely not harmful to inflict a day of fasting on predators, for in the wild these animals do not eat every day. According to the zoo, such variation in feeding time helps the animals remain alert.

Well, I’ll be! What kind of mentality would make somebody inflict religiously-based dietary restrictions on animals? And the Dutch: a supposedly enlightened people!

Maybe they’re doing that already. I shutter to think what else they’re doing to those poor animals. I’m not picking on the Dutch, in my province in Canada we still let those idiots run half of our publicly funded schools and hospitals.😦

It won’t hurt the big cats at least. I worked in the Big Cat house at a major zoo for a short while, and on Tuesdays the big cats didn’t get fed, as routine. It was an effort to mimic what would happen in the wild; wild animals don’t make a kill every day.
I do however find the religious reasoning behind this zoo’s behavior quite amusing.

For the sake of argument (and not semantics) I put it to you that not only are the dutch not (or no longer) accepting of others and others’ points of view, but they are a rather revolting collection of uptight know-it-alls who revel in the suffering and misfortunes of others.

They treat anyone who doesn’t appear to fit into their own narrow-minded mould disgustingly and do not hesitate to make their distaste of foreigners known.

So, save your definition of tolerance and have a good long look in the mirror and see the depths to which dutch society has sunk.

Going back to the 17th century, Holland was known for it’s cosmopolitan nature, dating back to the 1579 Union of Utrecht Decree of Toleration, providing refuge to the likes of Baruch Spinoza from religious persecution.

This tradition continues to the present day, one only need look at the history of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who would have probably never escaped from the Muslim bondage of her childhood without the refuge provided by the Dutch state. (And yes I know about the subsequent disgusting treatment of her by the Dutch government).

Holland has also been on the forefront of implementing rational, humanistic social policies in the areas of euthanasia, same sex marriage and abortion.

There is no doubt that there may be “a rather revolting collection of uptight know-it-alls who revel in the suffering and misfortunes of others”, but this hardly makes the Dutch any different from any other sectarian grouping of human beings.

I have no idea if you are Dutch, and I don’t really give a shit, but I find your behaviour revolting.

News flash: the Golden Age is long gone. Also, Your historical knowledge of Spinoza is incorrect (it was his ancestors that sought refuge in Amsterdam. Baruch was born there)

The tradition most certainly does not continue to this present day.

How dare you bring up Hirsi Ali. As you know so well (you did admit the same), she was the subject of a vicious witch-hunt by the racist Rita Verdonk and her overzealously supportive cabinet. A cabinet who lied and deceived and persecuted her. A cabinet that was elected – ergo, supported by – the dutch people.

Why does she no longer live in the dutch “paradise”, I wonder? She is still a citizen.

“…this hardly makes the Dutch any different from any other sectarian grouping of human beings.”

And that is my point exactly. The dutch no longer deserve the titles of “tolerant” and “egalitarian” etc. that they did so well to earn.

You certainly have not provided a shred of evidence to back up your position, not that your position seems to be much more than you don’t like Dutch people.

Your case seems to depend on vitriol, abuse and ranting and if I am to follow what passes for an exercise in logic, the fact that it was Spinoza’s ancestors that were welcomed by the Dutch and not Spinoza himself.

What you say is simply racism, you are generalizing the behaviour of an entire group based on the actions of a few (and I’m sure in your case very few) of it’s members.

It’s vile behaviour when applied to women, homosexuals, Muslims, negros etc. and it’s just as vile when applied to to the Dutch.

If you want to know what racism is all about, my friend, try being black in holland. Or Turkish, or Moroccan or Polish in holland for a day. Just a day.

You’ll soon realise how the pearly-white and blond dutch population discriminates against you all the time.

Dutch politics are poisoned with racism and bigotry (geert wilders, anyone?). Newspapers have been filled with xenophobia for years and years. The police are insistent on discriminating in order to “do their jobs” (stop-and-frisk… but only do it to the “darkies”).

Holland is no less bigoted than Italy. No less chauvinistic than France. No more compassionate than Spain.

You’ll need to go plenty further than calling me nasty, racist or a bigot to undo the terrible state that the netherlands is in.

With more than 16 million people in the Netherlands, about 13 million of them considered “Dutch”, it does seem psychotic to paint them all with the same high-volume, high-pressure spray painting gun. I wouldn’t have ever guessed the Dutch could provoke such emotion.

Maybe this practice is kind of a joke at the expense of the faithful — if it is already standard practice not to feed these animals every day, they schedule the fast day on Ash Wednesday as a subtle mockery of the Catholics? Or maybe they do it to give the more pious zookeepers a day off to go flagellate themselves or whatever they do.

I’ll say this much — a day of fasting would not go over well with the little predator who lives here!

I’m a Dutchman, and this is exactly how I take this: I expect the zoo has been planning to skip a day of meat anyway, and just picked Ash Wednesday as a joke. Also, Ash Wednesday is first and foremost associated with the end of Carnaval, and therefore with hangovers and exhaustion from too much partying. Religion doesn’t come into it.

While it is perfectly normal to not feed animals in zoos every single day (unless of course they are animals with very fast metabolisms that need it, which is not the case with large feline predators), it’s hilarious that animals are forced to play along with Catholic traditions when, according to that very same doctrine, they have no souls so wont be taking advantage of an afterlife anyway.

Predators don’t eat everyday in the wild and will not be harmed by this superstitious behavior. On a lighter note in the world of animals, it was announced today that the cat is replacing the iron in the Monopoly game.

Since many of the animals involved are not obligate carnivores (e.g., lions and other felids), the zookeepers should at least give the bears and canids some of the berries and other plant food they would eat as part of their diet in the wild. I know my dog loves green bell peppers, as well as nuts/seeds and certain breakfast cereals. [The nuts and seeds are a no-no, according to our vet, however!]

So your evidence is a single incident where both police and mayor consider that a mistake was made. And on the basis of that you conclude “The dutch are no longer enlightened people. Their society has gone to waste.”

Should someone be in need of an example of someone extrapolating well beyond their data …

What I was basically saying is that, if you cannot see how “The feeling of tolerance and respect for other opinions is disappearing more and more” and request a citation then you’re pretty dense. Yeah.

The fact that so many dutch people will admit that they have a backsliding, repressive society is ample proof that those who don’t get it are pretty dense indeed.

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Come on, this has nothing to do with religiosity. This is carnival – popular culture – and it shows that religious symbols, rituals and so on can be freely used for fun and publicity. And that is, I think, more a symptom of the erosion of religiosity than of its revival.

Sounds like a joke/publicity stunt, akin to feeding christmas trees to elephants or painting ostrich eggs on Easter. As someone kind of pointed out above, ash wednesday has become, in popular culture, a day jokingly dedicated to get over hangovers and the excesses of the carnival season, which ends the day before. I grew up culturally catholic in a predominantly catholic area of Europe, and there wasn’t anything remotely religious about carnival and its aftermath. I vividly remember everybody, including the local parish priest, happily eating meat during lent and on any friday of the year. And funnily enough the very first time I ever came across anyone with a smudge of ash on their forehead on ash wednesday was in… New York, and for the life of me I had no clue what it was all about. That goes to show how religion in many parts of Europe has just become part of the wider cultural background, along with the likes of the Grimm fables and the Smurfs.

The reasons are utterly, hilariously absurd. The outcome is perfectly reasonable, for predatory animals who don’t, in nature, get to eat every day.
I shall remember to ask about this the next time that I’m ambling from “coffee” shop to “coffee” shop along the Penis-strasse of Groningen, doing a bit of “window shopping”. Can’t let those Cloggies get away with the idea that they are completely free from resident idiots.

I viewed polar bears eating carrots at a zoo, and queried one of the keepers. She said they had to work at eating them, something to do, and that the carrots would not make them fat. Food as entertainment!

I have heard that zoos try to approximate conditions in the wild for predators in captivity – ie feast and famine – which makes sense. But to do this for religious reasons is of course moronic. This is a good example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, which defines a lot of religion. Of course the rest of religion is doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, so it pretty much all sucks arse.

In general the Dutch are very liberal (I’ll just ignore many traditions), but not all are enlightened.

The carnivores are just being emptied so that they have more space in their stomachs for catholics. After all, it’s a catholic tradition to be fed to the lions – or at least it was before Caesar Octavianus became Augustus.

“The seals will have better luck than the carnivores. They will get herring.”

Are seals not carnivores? Are fish not made of meat? Would a large feline turn its nose up at herring? (Pickled herring is great!) What is this fatuous distinction between hooves (and paws) and fins, and between land and ocean? What of an amphibian caught halfway between water and land?